An immune disease is a disease mean diseases in which components cause, mediate, or contribute the pathological conditions of the mammals, and particularly, inflammatory disorder is one of the most important health problems around the world. Inflammation is a generally localized protective response of body tissues to the host intrusion by external substances or harmful stimuli. The cause of inflammation may be a state associated with infectious causes such as bacteria, viruses, and parasites; physical causes such as burns or radiation; chemicals such as toxins, drugs, or industrial agents; it may be a condition associated with the immune responses such as allergy and autoimmune responses, or oxidative stress.
The inflammation is characterized by pain, a red phenomenon, swelling, heat, and an eventual functional loss of an infected area. These symptoms are results of a series of complex interactions occurring between cells in the immune system. As a result, due to the response of the cells, an interaction network of inflammatory mediators in many groups is generated: A protein (for example, cytokines, enzymes (e.g., protease, peroxidase), a major basic protein, adhesive molecules (ICAM, VCAM), lipid mediators (e.g., eicosanoid, prostaglandin, leukotriene, platelet activating factor (PAF)), reactive oxygen species (e.g., hydroperoxide, superoxide anion 02-, nitric oxide (NO), etc). However, most of mediators of the inflammation are normal cell activity regulators. Accordingly, while the host is not controlled due to the lack of the inflammatory response, the host is damaged (that is, inflected), and therefore, due to the chronic inflammation, partially, some of the aforementioned mediators are excessively generated and the mediated inflammatory diseases are caused.
Further, an autoimmune disease which is one of the immune diseases has a feature that the immune system causes a spontaneous response by attacking its organ. The responses are caused by recognition of auto-antigen by the T lymphocytes and humoral (production of auto-antigens) and cellular (increase of cytotoxic activity of lymphocytes and macrophages) immune responses are caused. The autoimmune diseases may include diseases below: Rheumatic diseases, psoriasis, systemic dermatomyositis, multiple sclerosis, lupus erythematosus, deterioration of immune responses by antigens, i.e., asthma, drug or food allergies, etc. The diseases are limitative and chronic diseases, and in some cases, fatal, and until now, an effective treating method capable of treating the diseases is not present. Therefore, drugs, medicines, or media capable of reducing or alleviating the diseases in the progress of the corresponding disease may become an important solved means for a patient's health.
Concentrated efforts to find appropriate drugs and methods by searching methods for treating the autoimmune diseases have been made. Today, the treatment of autoimmune diseases is mainly on the basis of the use of immunosuppressive drugs, for example, glucocorticoids, calcineurin inhibitors, and antiproliferatives-antimetabolites. However, such a pharmacological therapy acts on a variety of targets to entirely decrease the immune function. If not, in the case of using the pharmacological therapy for a long time, a variety of cytotoxic actions become the problem to suppress the immune system by a non-specific manner and thus the patients may be exposed to the risk of infections and cancer. Calcineurin and glucocorticoid have another problem due to their nephrotoxicity and diabetes induced characteristics, and thus in the case of some of the clinical symptoms (e.g., renal insufficiency, diabetes, etc.), the use thereof is restricted.
Accordingly, as a substance capable of treating immune diseases such as autoimmune diseases and inflammatory diseases, the development of novel therapeutic agents having an excellent treating effect without side effects is required.
Therefore, the present inventors confirmed that a newly synthesized compound can effectively treat the immune diseases while searching materials having less human side effects and capable of preventing or treating effectively the immune diseases and completed the present invention.